Lucien Tesnière

Elements of Structural Syntax

Translated by Timothy Osborne and Sylvain Kahane

John Benjamins Publishing Company

Lucien TesnièreElem

ents of Structural Syntax

This volume appears now finally in English, sixty years after the death of its author, Lucien Tesnière. It has been translated from the French original into German, Spanish, Italian, and Russian, and now at long last into English as well. The volume contains a comprehensive approach to the syntax of natural languages, an approach that is foundational for an entire stream in the modern study of syntax and grammar. This stream is known today as dependency grammar (DG). Drawing examples from dozens of languages, many of which he was proficient in, Tesnière presents insightful analyses of numerous phenomena of syntax. Among the highlights are the concepts of valency and head-initial vs. head-final languages. These concepts are now taken for granted by most modern theories of syntax, even by phrase structure grammars, which represent, in a sense, the opposite sort of approach to syntax from what Tesnière was advocating.

John Benjamins Publishing Company

ISBN 978 90 272 1212 2

z.185.cover.hb.indd 1 14/10/2014 16:18:07

August  26,  2015,  Depling,  Uppsala    

Our  mo9va9on  

•  Tesnière  (1893-­‐1954)  •  First  publica9on  of  Elements  in  French:  1959  

•  4132  cita9ons  on  Google  Scholar  •  No  English  transla9on  up  to  2015  •  A  spin-­‐off  of  Depling  – Tim  and  I  first  met  at  Depling  2011  – project  started  2  weeks  aUer  – published  by  Benjamins  in  2015  

Subject  of  the  presenta9on  

•  Why  should  you  read  Tesnière?  •  What  is  in  the  book?  

•  What  is  not  in  the  book?  

Tesnière  is  not  the  first  

•  to  draw  dependency  structures  •  Stephen  W.  Clark  (1847)  

Tesnière  is  not  the  first  

•  Franz  Kern  (1883)  

but  Tesnière  is  the  first  

•  to  elaborate  a  complete  linguis9c  theory  based  on  the  dependency  concept  – 670  pages  – 366  stemmas  (=  dependency  structures)  – dozens  of  languages  studied  

•  corpus  studies  =>  dependency-­‐based  representa9ons  for  the  main  construc9ons  in  numerous  and  varied  languages  –  including  very  complex  sentences:  

(Corneille,  Le  Cid,  I,  6,  Stemma  361)  

Tesnière  the  polyglot  

•  born  in  1893  in  Normandy  (France)  •  German  housekeeper  and  several  holydays  in  Germany  •  baccalauréat  La9n-­‐Grec  in  1910  •  next  year  in  England  and  Italy  •  graduated  at  Sorbonne  in  1913  in  English  and  Old  Norse  •  next  year  at  Leipzig:  studied  Gothic,  Old  High  German,  

Middle  High  German,  Old  Norse  •  cap9vity  during  WWI:  studied  Hebrew,  learned  Russian,  

Low  Breton,  Latvian,  Hungarian    works  as  French-­‐English-­‐Russian-­‐Italian-­‐German  interpreter  

•  PhD  defended  in  1925  on  forms  of  dual  in  Slovene  •  …  

Addi9onal  concepts  

•  Tesnière  augmented  his  dependency-­‐based  representa9ons  in  several  ways,  introducing  many  addi9onal  concepts  1.  verb  centrality  2.  stra9fica9on  3.  language  typology  4.  nuclei  5.  valency  6.  metataxis  7.  junc9on  8.  transfer  

1.  Verb  centrality  

•  “a  verbal  sentence  is  one  in  which  everything  gravitates  around  the  verb.  A  nominal  sentence  is  one  in  which  everything  gravitates  around  a  noun.  In  the  Russian  Dom  nov  ‘The  house  is  new’,  the  center  is  nov  (dom  →  nov).  In  contrast,  in  novy  dom  ‘new  house’  the  center  is  dom  (novy  →  dom).”  (lener  to  Mossé,  1932,  BNF,  Fonds  Tesnière)  

Tesnière  (1934)  Comment  construire  une  syntaxe  [How  to  build  a  syntax]  

2.  Stra9fica9on  

•  Two  orders:  – structural  order  =  dependency  structure  –  linear  order  =  spoken  chain  

•  “speaking  a  language  involves  transforming  structural  order  to  linear  order,  and  conversely,  understanding  a  language  involves  transforming  linear  order  to  structural  order”  (Chapter  6,  §4).  

unde

rstand

 speaking  

3.  Ordering  and  language  typology  

•  dis9nc9on  between  centrifugal  (head-­‐ini9al)  and  centripetal  (headfinal)  structures  and  languages  (Chapter  13)  (see  Greenberg  1963)  

•  classifica9on  of  almost  200  languages  (BNF)  

but  no  linearized  dependency  trees  in  the  book  

4.  Nucleus  

•  nodes  are  occupied  by  nuclei  –  “…if  there  are  seman9c  connec9ons  that  are  dis9nct  from  structural  connec9ons,  it  is  because  in  the  posi9ons  where  they  are  joined  there  are  seman9c  centers  dis9nct  from  the  structural  centers.”  (Chapter  22,  §2)  

–  the  nucleus  is  “the  set  which  joins  together,  in  addi9on  to  the  structural  node  itself,  all  the  other  elements  for  which  the  node  is  the  structural  support,  star9ng  with  the  seman9c  elements.”  (Chapter  22,  §5)  

5.  Valency  

•  “The  verb  may  therefore  be  compared  to  a  sort  of  atom,  suscep9ble  to  anrac9ng  a  greater  or  lesser  number  of  actants,  according  to  the  number  of  bonds  the  verb  has  available  to  keep  them  as  dependents.  The  number  of  bonds  a  verb  has  cons9tutes  what  we  call  the  verb’s  valency.”  (Chapter  97,  §3)  

6.  Metataxis  •  mismatches  in  dependency  structure  across  languages:  –  actant  conversions:  En.  I  miss  you  ↔  Fr.  Vous  me  manquez,  Chapter  123),  equivalence  with  the  ac9ve-­‐passive  alterna9on  (Chapter  125)  

–  inversion  of  dependency  direc9on:  En.  I  like  to  read  ↔  Ger.  Ich  lese  gern,  Chapter  129)  

–  dis9nc9on  between  manner-­‐incorpora9ng  and  path-­‐incorpora9ng  mo9on  verbs  (cf.  Talmy  (1974):  En.  Antoine  swam  across  the  river  ↔  Fr.  Antoine  traverse  le  fleuve  en  nageant,  Chapter  131).  

7.  Junc9on  

•  junc9on  (=  coordina9on)  is  orthogonal  to  connec9on  (=  subordina9on)  

Alfred  and  Bernard  laughed  

Alfred  laughs  and  sings  

7.  Junc9on  •  Part  II,  Chapter  134–50,  35  pages,  including  – gapping  

– or  comparison  (Alfred  likes  Bernard  like  a  brother)  

the  one  carries  his  shield  and  the  other  his  armor  (Stemma  273,  Chapter  146)  

8.  Transfer  •  Part  III,  Chapter  151–271  =  270  p.    •  Transfer  is  the  tool  that  allows  a  unit  of  one  syntac9c  category  to  occupy  a  posi9on  usually  devoted  to  a  unit  of  another  syntac9c  category.  –  a  French  linguist  –  a  linguist  of  France  •  transfer  of  a  noun  into  an  adjec9ve  •  of  is  a  transla9ve  

•  T-­‐like  nota9on  without  head:  

8.  Transfer  

•  transfer  of  a  verb  into  a  noun  –  I  expect  something  –  I  expect  that  Peter  is  coming  (analy9c  transfer)  

–  I  expect  Peter’s  coming  (synthe9c  transfer)  

•  transfer  of  verb  into  an  adjec9ve  –  l’homme  qui  écrit  ‘the  man  who  writes’  

– qui  is  both  a  transla9ve  and  a  pronoun  

Not  in  the  book  

•  no  real  criteria  for  dependency  (Garde  1974,  Mel’čuk  1988)  – “The  mind  perceives  connec9ons  between  a  word  and  its  neighbors”  (Chapter  1,  §3)  

•  no  gramma9cal  func9ons  (but  dis9nc9on  between  actants  1,  2,  3  and  circumstants)  

•  no  projec9vity  (Lecerf  1960)  •  no  formaliza9on  (Ajduckiewicz  1935,  Hays  1960)  

Good  reading!  

Index  

•  referal  from  modern  terms  to  original  terms  –  agent.  See  counter-­‐subject  –  argument.  See  actant  –  cli9c.  See  personal  index  –  complemen9zer.  See  transfer  (deverbal)  –  dependency.  See  connec9on  –  dependency  tree.  See  stemma  –  dependent.  See  subordinate  –  disloca9on  (leU,  right).  See  projec9on  of  actants  –  gapping.  See  anacatadidymic  –  head-­‐final.  See  centripetal  –  head-­‐ini9al.  See  centrifugal  –  rela9vizer.  See  transfereme  –  right  node  raising.  See  sentence  (catadidymic)